Deluxe window dressing

There’s always been something regal about Pat Cox’s style of oratory but it’s only now that the European Parliament chief has been elevated to the status of royalty.

Confused? Well, take a peek at the freshly scrubbed façade of the old Gare du Luxembourg (Leopold) entrance, a stone’s throw from Parliament’s Brussels HQ. Images of people looking out of the windows have been painted on the building’s second-storey. Cox’s visage peers from the corner of one window and that of Albert, king of the Belgians, can be seen in another.

There is something splendidly parochial about the state-aid investigation launched last week by the European Commission’s competition department into JC Decaux, a French advertising company. The question …